Featured

NASHVILLE (BP) -- Americans are expected to wager more than $8 billion on this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament. A LifeWay Research survey conducted last fall found if sports gambling does become legal in their state, many pastors are already planning their response.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — A group of Nashville churches decided recently to pray for every resident in their Bible Belt city. Then they sent out postcards to everyone on their prayer list. Some folks saw the prayers as an act of kindness. Others, a little creepy.

NASHVILLE (BP) -- LifeWay Christian Resources is charting a new course in 2019 marking a shift to a digital retail strategy. As part of the transition, LifeWay will close its 170 brick-and-mortar stores in 2019. The number of affected employees was not released today (March 20).

Your Opinion

Will you be focused more on your faith or your brackets in the next three weeks?

Podcast

Jesus Garcia, pastor at Iglesia Bautista de Metrópolis in Carolina, Puerto Rico, talks with Word&Way Editor & President Brian Kaylor. He discusses Baptists in Puerto Rico and the continuing efforts to rebuild from Hurricane Maria in 2017. He also talks about being dually-aligned with American Baptist Churches USA and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. (This episode is sponsored…

Marv Knox, field coordinator for Fellowship Southwest, talks with Word&Way Editor & President Brian Kaylor. He discusses the work of Fellowship Southwest in areas of immigration and hurricane response. A longtime Baptist editor, he also talks about the importance of Baptist journalism and press freedoms. (This episode is sponsored in part by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.)

In this episode, Word&Way Editor & President Brian Kaylor reports on a U.S. Supreme Court case involving a debate about the religious meaning of a cross on government land. The episode includes clips from the Court's oral arguments in the case, as well as comments by Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious…

This bonus episode features a sermon by Lance Muteyo, coordinator of the Pan African Peace Network, given at Prairie Baptist Church in Prairie Village, Kan. Hear Muteyo's interview with Word&Way Editor & President Brian Kaylor in episode 56.

Baptist

NASHVILLE (BP) -- LifeWay Christian Resources is charting a new course in 2019 marking a shift to a digital retail strategy. As part of the transition, LifeWay will close its 170 brick-and-mortar stores in 2019. The number of affected employees was not released today (March 20).

Nation

U.S. states with higher levels of gun ownership and those with fewer restrictions have higher rates of mass shootings, according to research published this month by a United Kingdom-based medical journal.

CHICAGO (BP) -- A three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled unanimously the long-standing clergy allowance does not violate the First Amendment clause that prohibits government establishment of religion, reversing a federal judge's 2017 opinion.

Funding for K-12 schools in the U.S. has increased in recent years, but in 24 states, it remains below levels before the “Great Recession,” according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) report published March 6.

World

(RNS) — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said people of all faiths will have “something to say” about the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan the White House is expected to announce after Israel’s elections in two weeks.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — At least 49 people were killed in mass shootings at two mosques full of worshippers attending Friday prayers on what the prime minister called "one of New Zealand's darkest days."

Only 35 percent of the world’s children have social safety net protections available to them, according to a joint report published Feb. 6 by the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Faith & Culture

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) — A group of Nashville churches decided recently to pray for every resident in their Bible Belt city. Then they sent out postcards to everyone on their prayer list. Some folks saw the prayers as an act of kindness. Others, a little creepy.

(RNS) — On March 5, Fat Tuesday, Paul Begala, a consultant for CNN and veteran D.C. insider who has spoken publicly about his Catholic faith, made a public act of contrition. He wasn’t the first to admit his Twitter sins.

Media & Entertainment

NASHVILLE (BP) -- Americans are expected to wager more than $8 billion on this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament. A LifeWay Research survey conducted last fall found if sports gambling does become legal in their state, many pastors are already planning their response.

“I candidly looked around and didn’t recognize what I had become," confessed a Baptist pastor in 2014, active on social media and the blogosphere. "My friends suggested that the over-zealousness of a reckless critic is ultimately no better than error.”

Alabaster — which started as a 2016 Kickstarter campaign — Is trying to better appeal to a millennial aesthetic by re-designing portions of the Bible with original photography and a sleek layout to look like specialty indie magazines such as Kinfolk, Drift and Cereal.

Editorials

There’s a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and its dictator “won” an unfair election last year to hold power. But if the recent past in Latin America — and elsewhere — teaches us anything, it’s that military invasions and coups destabilize

As we ponder the story of Jesus' baptism, experts in Israel work to remove thousands of landmines from the area near the River Jordan and the traditional baptism site of Jesus. That’s right: One of the holiest sites remains surrounded

(RNS) — Just over 2.5 percent of those serving in Congress identify to an untraditional theistic faith or no faith at all.Compare this to the general American public: fewer than half consider religion to be an important part of their lives. Why?

Commentary

Paul is the writer of some of the deepest theological lessons in the New Testament. He could hold his own with the greatest philosophers of that day in Athens. Yet this man we recognize as a champion of Christ admits

Over the next four Sundays we will be studying parts of the Apostle Paul's most comprehensive theological treatise, his letter to the church at Rome. So far as we know, Paul never visited the church at Rome, but his letter